Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (19:52): (1348) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Planning, and the action I seek is that the minister give very careful consideration to the battery farms that are being proposed in my electorate. The locations are in Shady Creek, Yarragon North and Bunyip. Everybody knows that regional Victoria is bearing the burden of the government’s renewable program, but something is really concerning about these areas where they have got these battery farms that they are going to set up. I will reference Shady Creek. You should not be setting up a battery farm where you have got a bushfire overlay. That is not smart. We know that if these batteries catch fire, they are not easy to put out and the risk to the environment is quite significant. The other location, the one in Bunyip, is right next to rivers that run through that area. Again, I live in an area of Victoria that is bushfire prone. The Baw Baw shire is regarded as one of the most disaster-prone areas in Australia.

I am asking the minister to give these very, very careful consideration, because what is happening is that these get approval by the minister with very little or no community consultation, and rightly these communities are getting more and more nervous the more of these that come online. It is one thing to push things through and to ram them through; it is another thing to listen to the community about their concerns. What is even more scary is that where these battery farms are, there is no renewable overlay. It does not exist. The renewable overlay is 50 k’s up the road, more towards Moe or Morwell – up that way. But what is also concerning to me, after I read up on this, is that the minister can remove overlays at her will for these programs to happen. That includes bushfire overlays, heritage overlays and flood overlays. It is quite frightening in regional communities that those overlays can be totally disregarded, and then they can put these battery farms wherever they want. I am urging the minister to reconsider these three farms and their locations, because at the moment they are not appropriate. They have to have a serious think about it so my communities are not at risk physically or environmentally.